The Bridge from Africa to Great Britain

Bit of a stretch to call this art. It caught my eye online so I bought it (even after I knew what it was about). It's a small print. about 3 1/2" by 6 1/4", c1869.






It's an illustration from "The travels and surprising adventures of Baron Munchausen"

"Because the arch was of so great a height, and in some parts so elongated from the earth, as in a great measure to diminish in its gravitation to the centre of our globe; or rather, seemed more easily operated upon by the attraction of the planets: So that the stones of the arch, one would think, at certain times, were ready to fall up to the moon, and at other times to fall down to the earth. But as the former was more to be dreaded, I secured stability to the fabric by a very curious contrivance: I ordered the architects to get the heads of some hundred numbskulls and blockheads, and fix them to the interior surface of the arch, at certain intervals, all the whole length, by which means the arch was held together firm, and its inclination to the earth eternally established; because of all the things in the world, the skulls of these kind of animals have a strange facility of tending to the centre of the earth."

 

I loved these stories as a child; besides Swift's Gulliver's Travels and a few others.
so good to stimulate the phantasy of children.

 

There was an real Baron Münchhausen who was known as a raconteur of exaggerated yarns, but nothing like what they became in print. He sued the original publishers claiming damages to his name and reputation, but wasn't able to stop it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baron_Munchausen